


Mother's Touch

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 00:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dean goes to your mother’s funeral.





	Mother's Touch

The afternoon daylight breaks through the stained glass window into the mostly empty funeral hall. The pastor says the last of his pre-written, default sermon. Everyone, the whole hunting gang, sit silently, their teeth clenched in attempts to stifle burgeoning tears. None of this made sense, the wound still fresh and blistering in pain with every move. Your mother was the pillar of the group, the safehouse everyone went to in times of need. Your home was basically a way station your whole life. Unfamiliar men and women would come to every couple of days, sleep in the spare bed in the basement of your house, eat breakfast before you woke, and head out. That’s what started everything, that’s how you came to know Sam and Dean.

Their father was close friends with your mother, Emily, for years before you were born. When he came into hunting he found out your mother’s little quirks, like using only silver utensils and the tiny edges of red paint peeking out from corners of carpets, were not just “quirks”. For weeks on end, the two boys would stay at your house and your mother treated them like family. Eventually, they were family. You relied on each other for everything. Dean taught you how to tie your shoes properly and Sam would make his favorite mac and cheese whenever he could for you after school. It was almost perfect, maybe longer than it should have lasted.

John was never a saint and he brought out the worst of your mother. Their “relationship” turned rocky when you were sixteen. Every night they’d fight. Emily asking John to stop drinking so much and calm down after throwing a fit and John would shout for Emily to mind her own business. Things occasionally would turn into more than just words. Some nights you can still hear the sound of crashing lamps, scattering books and animal-like roars of frustration muffled through the door of your room.

Two days after your sixteenth birthday they left. Sam and Dean were gone, the only trace of their presence a simple picture that was taken two years after they came to visit the first time. Dean’s hair was uneven, cut by John with some kitchen scissors, and Sam’s left check was adorned with a peeling band-aid. You kept that picture with you until today, where it sits in your wallet, white lines breaking the faded picture where it has been opened and folded again so many times. By the time you met again they were all grown up, and so were you. You hardly recognized each other on the streets until the Winchesters came to your house again, asking for your mother.

That reunion became bittersweet within minutes. Dean and Sam regaled their story of John going missing and a shiver rolled down your spine. They asked where you mother was, wanting to say thank you and hi before asking for her help. The house only echoes its silence in response when they shout for her.

“She went out a couple days ago. Said someone needed help and that it shouldn’t take more than a week.” But, looking at your phone, you realize that while your days blended together in your routine of filling in for your mother as the den mother for hunters, that a week had come and gone. And your stomach turned. Their fearful glance only tightened the knot.

Your nerves ate at you with every town you passed with the boys on the way to search for your mother, your clues only in the stories of drunkard hunters about seeing a rag-tag duo that sounded exactly like John and Emily. Finally, you reached Arizona, it’s dry heat eating away the moisture from your skin while making sweat roll down his neck. What you see almost makes you wish you never looked for her in the first place. A mutilated corpse of your mother sits in the morgue of the local medical examiner’s office. Emily’s freckled skin has been eaten away mainly by bugs, but the tattoo on her inner upper arm remains. The same tattoo on the Winchesters’ body to protect against possession.

Emily’s chest had been ripped open, ravaged by some unknown beast, and her legs broken in multiple places, the bones sticking through the little flesh she has left. Almost all her organs are missing, except her opaque blue eyes which look like fake Halloween gag eyes in her skull. Her lush hair is filled with twigs and leaves, severely matted like an uncombed dog’s fur. The sight of her as they pulled back the white sheet sending you running out of the office. Without strength in your legs, you collapse against the worn stucco building exterior, nauseous, angry and tired. So ridiculously tired after weeks of endless searching, shitty motels filled with bugs, and crappy fast food. You just want to go home and forget.

Dean holds you in the back seat of the Impala on the ride back home, his arm awkwardly hanging around your shoulder as he glances between your face and the night road. It doesn’t take long after getting home for Bobby, Rufus, Jo, and Ellen to arrive after news traveled of Emily’s death. No John, though. Not even a whiff of him. The body came shortly afterward. And then came the funeral.

The pastor leaves, saying his condolences, before scuffling his new dress shoe clad feet onto the next ceremony. Your eyes bore into the 70’s carpeting and everyone else shuffles their hands anxiously, bouncing between consoling you or leaving you alone. With a quick nod from Dean, they choose the latter. After their footsteps fade off into the funeral home the rage boiling in your belly pushes the lid off. Not caring about the sound or the effect the wooden casket would have on your hand you punch the casing, wailing like a dying animal. The hard surface breaks away at your knuckles, blood rising and staining the glossy surface of the casket.

“You’re an idiot! You’re not a spring chicken so what makes you think you could have made it out?!” Your shouts draw the attention of fellow funeral goers, everyone staring, and mummer under their breath in disbelief. But you don’t hear them. “That asshole didn’t deserve your help! Where is he if he really cared?!”

Sam corridors the onlookers, guiding them away like a preschool teacher leading their students on a field trip. Dean walks over and stops right before he places his hand on the middle of your back. Your trembling figure makes a lump for in the middle of his throat, no amount of swallowing makes it go away. He hears your voice and a tear rolls down the side of his face onto his neck.

“Mom, why did you go…” Dean can practically feel the pain in your voice in his bones.

Without a word Dean lets you cry, memories of the days after his mother died playing like an old VHS in his mind. Dean never thought he’d be in the same position again. Unsure what happened, lost, and watching his family suffer after the loss of his mother. But it happened again. And again, John’s support is nowhere to be found. Dean feels like a child again, telling himself what his dad always told him, suck it up and move forward. Out of sight, out of mind. But this time, it is anything but out of sight. The memories of the days spent with your mother making them lunch, asking how school went, even the nights she tucked them into bed are burned into his mind. Even though it has been years since any of those things happened he still often falls asleep with the memory of your mother’s voice, her hugs, and the smell of fresh vanilla on her skin as if she was right there with him.

Dean sighs, whispers under his breath, “I’ll find what did this, Mom, I promise.” Dean gets up, rests his hand on the casket, rasps his fingers against the smooth surface before resting his forehead against it. The cold wood only makes his longing for Emily’s slender fingers to rest on top of his head, to ruffle his hair, and soothe his aching body and mind. He hadn’t realized until now how much he missed her touch.

A mother’s touch.


End file.
